


No Way Back

by Trillian_Astra



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-20
Updated: 2010-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trillian_Astra/pseuds/Trillian_Astra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That's the thing about shared dreaming. Once you're in, once you start, the real world isn't enough any more."</p><p>Post-movie. They tried to stay apart, but couldn't, and found themselves back together for a job, even if it did feel like someone was missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Way Back

Ariadne blinks as she wakes, and finds herself back in the aeroplane-

-_back in the plane? Did I ever leave?_

-she shakes herself discreetly, looks around. Sees Arthur, Eames, and Yusuf waking. Across the aisle from her seat, Fischer opens his eyes and momentarily looks surprised to be there. She twists in her seat. Behind Fischer, Cobb is still asleep. A feeling of dread settles in her stomach, and it takes her a moment to remember why.

The plane lands. Fischer glances at her as they get ready to disembark. He smiles at her shyly. She tries not to look at him.

They walk off the plane into the terminal, the four of them. They're not walking together, exactly, but they stick close to each other all through baggage claim and customs.

It's only when they reach the Starbucks in the arrivals lounge that they stop. Sitting around a table, none of them exactly wanting to look at the others. None of them wanting to say the thing on all their minds.

Arthur breaks the silence. "He didn't wake up."

"It wasn't the sedative," Yusuf says, out of some need to absolve himself, perhaps.

"No," Ariadne says, "it wasn't. He stayed down there. In limbo."

"We should do something. He has kids...." Arthur looks helpless. He doesn't enjoy the feeling.

"I know how to reach their grandfather," Ariadne says, and she tells them about her professor, who was _her_ father (she doesn't want to say the name of Cobb's wife), and Cobb's father-in-law.

That was the first thing they agreed. Ariadne would call her professor, tell him what had happened.

Next comes the problem of Cobb himself. He's still asleep, and Saito never got to honour that agreement they had, which means that when – if – Cobb wakes up, he's still going to prison for a long time.

(Saito is asleep too. The cabin crew on the plane called for an ambulance when they realised they had two passengers on board who wouldn't wake up. Cobb and Saito would be lying, still asleep, in hospital beds soon.)

The second thing they agreed on was that they needed to do something about the arrangement. Eames – who has been unusually quiet – says that he'll handle that. He is, after all, a forger, and his talents do not only extend to the dream world.

"What do we do now?" Ariadne asks. They're all so much more experienced at this than she is.

"We split," Arthur tells her.

The third thing they agreed on was to separate, to each go their own way for a while. Six months, Arthur suggested, long enough to make sure that no-one suspected them of anything.

_Long enough to recover,_ she thinks.  
So they scatter. Yusuf goes back to Mombasa. Eames mutters something about Tokyo and bids them farewell. Arthur is the last to say goodbye to her. He kisses her on the cheek and leaves for London.

Ariadne flies back to Paris, and goes back to her studies.

That was the idea, at least. She got to Paris, and her rented room, and spent a week telling people about her _desperately_ sick aunt who had just passed away. It wasn't true (Ariadne has no aunts, only an uncle who lives in Toronto and is as healthy as an ox), but at least her concocted story about her fictional aunt's funeral gives her an excuse to get upset over the tiniest things.

Spinning tops make her feel sick whenever she looks at them.

Ariadne drifts further and further from her so-called familiar life. She stops seeing her friends, shows up at class but doesn't really pay attention any more, stops going out.

Dreams are the only place she has any refuge any more. She borrows an idea from Cobb, and constructs magnificent, impossible structures for her dreams. She starts to notice the projections that people her little world more. Sometimes they look like people she knows.

One night, she's dreaming of a pond in an enormous park she created for herself, sitting on the edge of a jetty and dangling her feet in the water. The peace is disturbed by a soft voice behind her.

"Ariadne," it says. She freezes, because she knows that voice. She twists around, but all she sees is Cobb's back as he disappears from vision.

_It's just a projection_, she tells herself.

But after that, she worries that he will appear in her dreams again.

One day, she's reading a newspaper and catches a headline halfway down the page:

FISCHER HEIR TO SPLIT UP EMPIRE

She swallows hard, and carefully tears out the small article. She folds the square of newspaper gently and tucks it away in her purse.

It is three months, one week and four days since they last saw each other in LAX when someone knocks on Ariadne's door.

She looks up from the textbook she's reading (she's read the same sentence five times now), and says, "Come in."

The door opens and it's Arthur standing there, looking just as he did when he kissed her goodbye. She springs up from the bed and hugs him. He stiffens in surprise, and she decides that Arthur hasn't been hugged much in his life. She lets go of him, and shuts the door, and invites him to sit down.

He clears a pile of books off a chair and sits. She sits on the bed.

"What are you doing here, I thought we weren't supposed to see each other for six months? I thought it wasn't safe..."

He looks down at the floor for a long moment before answering. "It's as safe as things ever get."

"How have you been?"

"Good," he says vaguely. "Took some time out, went on holiday for a while."

"Have you seen the others?"

"No. You?"

"No."

They sit in silence for a moment. Ariadne says, "I missed you..."

Arthur looks up, startled. "...all of you," she finishes. "It's... it's strange. I thought it would be easy to go back, to live my old life again. But it's not. All I can think about is dreaming."

He smiles. "Yeah. I remember that feeling. It hits everyone eventually. That's the thing about shared dreaming. Once you're in, once you start, the real world isn't enough any more."

"You sound like-" Ariadne bites off the rest of that sentence hurriedly, but they both know what name she was about to say. Instead she says, "Have you heard anything?"

Arthur shakes his head. "No change."

"Oh." She takes a deep breath. "Why did you come here, Arthur?"

"There's a job. A pretty lucrative one, too. But I need a team... and more importantly, I need an architect." He looks at her. "You in?"

Ariadne looks around at her room, at the single bed, the desk piled with books, the class timetable pinned to the wall, and finally looks back at Arthur.

"I'm in," she says with a nod. She will not miss this room, her studies, her classes, her flatmates. This is not her world any more.

She takes a couple of days to deal with the paperwork for the college, removing herself from all her classes, returning library books and packing the rest of her belongings into boxes. She says goodbye to the few people here that she cares about-

_the professor looks disappointed in her_

-and leaves Paris with Arthur. She brings with her a single bag of clothes, books, a little jewellery. The rest she leaves in the care of her old flatmates for now.

Arthur and Ariadne get on a plane to Geneva, where they check into a hotel (separate rooms, of course). After leaving their bags in their rooms, they go downstairs to the hotel bar.

Eames is waiting for them, sitting at a corner table that he's reserved. He stands as they reach the table. "Ariadne... lovely to see you again, darling," he says as he takes her hand and kisses it. "You too, Arthur, of course," he adds with a wicked grin.

Arthur rolls his eyes. "Where's Yusuf?"  
"Bathroom. Can I offer anyone a drink?"

Eames orders drinks from the bar (whiskey for himself, gin for Arthur, wine for Ariadne), and the waiter appears with their glasses just as Yusuf returns.

They exchange small talk about their months apart for a while. Arthur tells them, in a low voice, about the job he has lined up.

Ariadne realises later that really, there was never any question of them taking the job. As it was, they all agreed straight away, and started planning.

It felt almost – _almost_ – like the last job they worked together. They all tried not to think about the fact that there should have been five of them there.


End file.
